Unable to change environmental variables in node.js in Visual Studio Code

Question

I'm new here and I'm new with this programming language, so maybe my question is something very obvious.

I am trying to set an environmental variable in Node.js in Visual Studio Code (for example NODE_ENV to production). I've tried setting it using an .env file and using the dotenv package. This does not seem to work, and when I try to print the variable to the console it prints 'undefined'. This is the part that I have included in the .env file:

NODE_ENV = production 

This is a part of the js file that I try to run:

 const path = require('path') require('dotenv').config() console.log(process.env.NODE_ENV)

When I run this 'undefined' gets printed to the console. I also tried passing the place of the file as an argument with the config for dotenv, like this . That did not work. I even tried to set te environmental variables directly via launch.json like this:

 "version": "0.2.0", "configurations": [ { "type": "pwa-node", "request": "launch", "name": "Launch Program", "skipFiles": [ "<node_internals>/**" ], "program": "${file}", "env": { "NODE_ENV" : "production", } } ] }

That also did not work.

Why is this? Why isn't Visual Studio Code able to change the environmental variables? Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

According to the docs of dotenv there should be no space between the variable name and its value.

The syntax is: VARNAME=VALUE

So your .env file should be

NODE_ENV=production